Troll Mountain Retreat

Greetings and salutations loyal readers of the blog,

I’m glad you all made the effort to meet us on Troll Mountain. As you can see the vistas are spectacular. You’ll have to pardon me if I’m inattentive. Sleep is a rare commodity, because our hosts hunt us every night. Mischievous Raven and I must keep on the move. Mischievous is sleeping, he has to keep his wits sharp in case we encounter trolls at night. It’s his job to out riddle them. Trolls are fond of riddles, but they don’t like it when they get out riddled. Last night, the biggest troll I’ve seen on this trip cornered us. He was grayish-green with a large snot bubble that kept inflating and deflating with each rattling breath.

He snatched me up in his filthy hand. “Not a whole meal but you do for starters.”

I nearly blacked from the stench emanating from his mouth.

Mischievous flapped his wings yelling obscenities before he threw down the gauntlet.” That is my dinner, thank you very much. Give him back.”

“How can it be so when I’m holding him?” The snot bubble coming ever closer to me as I dangle in mid-air.

“Perhaps a game of riddles will decide the rightful owner,” Mischievous challenged.

“What does a bird know of riddling?”

Mischievous starts. “I am the beginning of the end, and the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place. What am I?”

Snotty Troll laughed, bursting his snot bubble, “That’s EEEasy. It’s the letter E. It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?”

“Is that all you got? Man or dwarves if you prefer the current example.” Pointing a wing in my direction. “ I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breathe on this terrestrial ball. What am I?”

“The future.” A new snot bubble is reforming, but his grip slackened slightly. “What always runs but never walks, often murmurs, never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a mouth but never eats?”

Mischievous paused scratching his head. “A river, yes that’s it.” Strutting around doing his Mick Jagger impersonation. “At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen. What are they?”

This time Troll scratches himself, I won’t mention where in mixed company. “Give me another.”

“If you can’t answer I win.” Mischievous strutted about again. “I’ll take my dinner now, if you please.”

“Not so. You started, so I get ask you one.”  Troll frowned in concentration. “The more you have of it, the less you see. What is it?”

“Tricky one indeed” … Mischievous hummed.”

“Your answer bird, now,” Troll growled.

“All right all right. It is darkness. I win I win.”

“You must give me one more.”

“Do not.”

“Do so!”

“Not.”

“Yes you must.” Troll yelled, dropping me in the process of reaching for Mischievous.

I ran as fast as my short legs would carry me, this was not going the way I’d expected. Mischievous performed and inverted roll in mid air.

“The person who makes it, sells it. The person who buys it never uses it and the person who uses it doesn’t know they are using it. What is it?” Mischievous said as he led Troll in the other direction. Allowing me to escape we rendezvoused eary this morning.

Well enough of my adventures here in the land of the Trolls. We were going to talk about fictional characters this week. Since the sun is low on the horizon indicating our time is at hand I will be brief and we can pick this up again next week. In E. A. Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the main character is never named. The story, told in the first person starts with his denial of his own madness. Instead he claims a clarity, or a sharpening of his own senses. In three pages we see this madman go completely off his rocker. Killing the old man and hiding his dismembered body below the floor boards. All the while crying his sanity, claiming that the old mans evil eye drove him to it. His denial of his own madness continues right to the end when he admits his crime to the officials. The man with no name tells a story of madness so intense and personal you can’t, not be drawn into the tale by him.

I’ve clearly run too long here, so have a great week and please tell me who your favorite fictional characters are in the comment box. We’ll talk about them next week.

This weeks quote comes from Cindy Williams.

“Dreams are the souls pantry. Keep it well stocked and your soul will never hunger.”

Write On,

Eerie Dwarf

Two Out The Three Rs, Reading and Writing

Greetings and Salutations Loyal readers of the blog,

If you stopped by yesterday you got to meet Faith Hunter.  She managed to reduce my friend Mischievous Raven to a blubbering mass of black feathers.  He was acting like a teenage girl at a boy band concert.  I’ve never seen him quite so overcome.  He kept calling out Jane , J-a-n-e, Jaaaaannnnnne.  I’m pretty sure he was confusing Ms. Hunter with her fictional character Jane Yellowrock.  Of course as he pointed out last week, fictional characters can take on a life all their own.  Which is the topic of my absolute favorite Stephen King novel The Dark Half.  Of course when I meet Mr. King I won’t become an incoherent stumbling fool.  Okay maybe I will.  All right, I’m sure I will. But I won’t start calling him Thad Beaumont or worse George Stark.  I’m pretty sure.

The mention of The Dark Half had me going into the shrine and pulling it off the shelf.  Lately I’ve been rereading some of my favorite books, most of them from my childhood.  There are so many books to read, it’s overwhelming when you consider.  Most of them are quite good and certainly worthy of my time.  The fact that I will never be able to read them all may be my only regret.  I enjoy a diverse or some may say eclectic list.  Old Classics, Science Fiction, Literary, Humor, and even the occasional Romance, but Horror is where my heart lies.  When the world as we know it, is reflected back to us from a fun house mirror our view gets distorted.

What Stephen King and his contemporaries do so well is present us regular Joes, or the girls next door, in a way that we identify with.  We either know these characters or, in some cases, we are these characters.  They do regular things, in a regular world, in the regular way.  They covet what they don’t have, some take the moral high ground and some are content to justify the means with the end.  Characters we know and love, or in some cases love to hate.

Then they put these regular Joes in situations that are irregular.  They imagine them into predicaments that in some cases could happen to us all and in some cases (Thank God) cannot.  But because we identify with them from the outset we go along for the ride.  Deeply imbedded into this impossible situation we struggle right along with them.  When their car overheats and they stroll up to that farmhouse that is all to conveniently near by.  We are glad they won’t have to spend the night on a deserted road.  At the same time we want to scream, tell them no.  This is a bad idea.  And when a little old lady answers the door and invites them in for tea we are relieved.  Her deformed middle-aged son who lives in the basement sharpening scythes all day won’t be up until later.  Not until it’s TOO LATE, for them anyway.

Authors who can pull us into the mundane world and turn it ever so slightly.  Just enough to raise the hair on the back of our neck, but not so much that it is unrecognizable, these are the masters of horror.  These are the men and women who cause me to regret I have but one lifetime to read all there is to read.  This is the joy of reading.  And of course these are the authors who I emulate in my own writing.

I was going to add a short list of my favorites here and realized that it would not–could not ever be short.  In fact the longer I write this blog more great books come to mind.  Books that seized me by the imagination and never have let go.  I still know the names of characters I read long ago.  Why?  Because they impacted me in way that refuses to slacken their grip.  From the black-hearted Montresor in E. A. Poe’s, The Cask Of The Amontillado, and young Jim Hawkins of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Treasure Island, to Joe Hill’s Judas Coyne of A Heart Shaped Box and Christopher Moore’s Charlie Asher of It’s A Dirty Job, all these characters have rented rooms in my memory and there they stay.  The fictional character boarding house is getting crowded.  But I’ll put on an addition, if need be, to accommodate the next wave of great characters surely to come into my life.

Thanks to all those authors who willingly wear their hearts on their sleeves and sleep with the lights on.

Don’t forget Blood Trade Faith Hunter’s newest Jane Yellowrock novel is available now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. 

Today were traveling with Mr. Peabody in the Way Back Machine for this weeks quotation.(If you know this pop culture reference you’re old, just saying)

“The level of our success is limited only by our imagination”  Aesop

Write On,

Eerie Dwarf

Something’s Amiss

Greetings and Salutations once again loyal blog readers,

We are coming to you live from The Swamp.  Mischievous Raven and I are making the rounds today to check on our friends and neighbors.

“Where should we go first MR?”

MR       “Let’s sneak up, I mean check up on C.Rock Adile.  Might as well get the worst out of the way early.”

Eerie    ”I know he’s a bit of a pill, but things won’t change if don’t try to get along with him.  There he is.  Be nice.  Hey CR, how are you today?”

CR        ”Eerie, Mischievous, it’s good to see you both.  Mischievous here, was telling me you were visiting with the Werewolf Monks, trying to get some writing done.”

Eerie    ”Yeah I’ve been at the Monastery for the last few weeks.”

CR         “Mischievous was taking fine care of your place in your absence.  He is quite an asset to our community.”

Eerie    ”Really.  That is high praise indeed coming from you CR.”

CR        ”Not at all.  We’ve had our differences in the past , but that’s all over.  Right little buddy?”  CR puts an arm around Mischievous and gives him a man hug.

Eerie    ”Your awfully quiet.”  Looking at MR

MR      ”I’m speechless.”

CR       Laughing.  ”Well that’s a first my onyx friend.”

Eerie    ”Yes quite.  I’ve heard The Swamp Thing has planted a flower garden so we’re heading over to see how she is getting on with that.”

CR       “You must see it to believe it.  It rivals Dreamy Dwarf’s place.  Off with you then.  Stop by later, I’m brewing sun tea.”

Eerie    ”That was odd.”

MR        ”Your telling me.  He’s done nothing, but give me grief the whole time you were gone.”

Eerie       “Holy salamanders.  Look at all those flowers!  It’s a virtual  tsunami of color.”

MR           “Here she comes.  Keep your voice down.”

Eerie         “What a lovely garden Swamp Thing.  You must have a green thumb.”

Swamp Thing    ”Hello Eerie,  Of course I have a green thumb.  I have a green everything incase you haven’t noticed.”

Eerie    ”Yes What I meant is you–”

Swamp Thing    ”I know what you meant silly.  Don’t be so serious.”  She laughs.

Eerie    ”I heard you planted a garden, but I didn’t believe it until now.  What possessed you to plant flowers.”

Swamp Thing    ”Having all those decaying body parts around got too depressing.  I decided to brighten the place up.”

Eerie    ”You’ve certainly done that.  It’s… It’s, I don’t have words for it.”

Swamp Thing    ”That’s the nicest thing you’ve never said to me.”  She laughs herself to tears at her own joke.

Eerie    ”I’ve gotta run Swamp Thing. You keep up the beautiful work.  Come on Mischievous.  Let’s get out of here.”  Once out of earshot of the still laughing Swamp Thing.  “What is going on here?  It’s like the Stepford Swamp.  Or something from an HP Lovecraft story.”

MR      ”I’m as confused as you.  I don’t recommend drinking the water until we get to the bottom of this.”

Eerie    ”I hear you.  We need to sort this out.  If this keeps up The Swamp will be over run with tourists or worse people will want to move in.

MR       “No.  Not people.  Nothing lowers property values faster than people.”

Well folks as you can see we’re going to be busy until we find out what’s causing our neighbors to be nice all of a sudden.  Mischievous has selected a quote to leave you with.   I’ll see you next week.

“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”Edgar Allan Poe

Write On,

Eerie

News From Wicked

“Hey Eerie I’ve got a letter from wicked.  She wants to know about the soundness of your mind.  Are you going to tell her or should I.”

“Pray tell, Mischievous.  What would you tell her?”

“I would tell that your mind is like a sound check before a stadium concert.  One two, one two, check, check, interspersed with a lot of feed back.”  Mischievous laughed then passed me the fried toad skins.

“Thank you Mischievous.  I think that the nicest thing you’ve said to me since I got us into this mess.  Take down this response to Wicked, you can drop off when you go check on my muse.”

Dear Wicked,

Thank you so much for the letter.  As you know my zombies are Free Range, with no added hormones.  Sunny advised me that the hormones were not healthy.  In order to provide a quality product some sacrifices have to be made.  It’s nice to see the Swamp Thing is back to her old self since she kicked the swamp gas.  I was sorry to hear that Hippy left town, as you said he’ll land on his feet, but the zombies will miss his brains.  As far as our muses are concerned I hope the Whip-Mistress can–

“Eerie, check it out. is that a Hummer on steroids coming up the mountain?  That troll better get out of…ouch that’s going to hurt tomorrow.  Who do you think it is?  I can’t see anything through those tinted windows.”

“Watch out!   It’s coming right at us.  Run.”  Grabbing the plate of toad skins I leap.

The drivers window slides down noiselessly.  ”Hey stupid, it’s me, let’s go.  I’ve got a date.”

The signature red plaid shirt never looked so good.  ”You’re a sight for sore eyes, but what’s she doing here?”  I nod my head at the female sitting next him.

“She’s holding the flask while I drive.  I can’t steer up these hills, run down trolls and hold the flask.  I might spill it in my new rig.  What do you think of my new ride, sweeeet huh?”

“Yeah it’s nice.  You didn’t spring for the fifty caliber machine gun, I see.”

“Wrong again. I ordered the after market version with the heat sensor auto sighting and a laser guided surface to surface missile launcher.  They’re back ordered, should be in this week.  Enough with the idle chit-chat.  I’ve got places to see, things to go, and people to do.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?  Why did you have to bring her?  She scares me.  And I don’t like the way she’s eyeing Mischievous.  She looks hungry don’t they serve food at the Fillet Your Own?  You should feed her before you bring her out.”

“You know I can hear you Shorty.”She tips a flask to her lips and passes it.  ”And I don’t like to be kept waiting, so get in or walk.”

“Who’re you calling Shorty?  You don’t buy your clothes at the Big and Tall shop.  Don’t you have something else you should be doing anyway?  I heard Wicked is looking for you.

“She’ll find me when I’m ready to be found and not before.  Not that it’s any of your business.”  She ran one finger along the sharp edge of a long knife as she spoke.

“Right then.  I’ll just g, ge, get in the back.  Come on Mischievous.”

“You’re on your own. I’m not riding with her.  I’ll see back at the swamp.”  With a graceful leap and a flap of his onyx wings he soared on the wind.

“I hope I see him back there.  I’ll leave you with this appropriate quote from Edgar Allen Poe.”

“But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Write On,

Eerie

Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!

The Haunted Palace

by Edgar Allen Poe

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace -
Radiant palace – reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion -
It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This – all this – was in the olden
Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingèd odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute’s well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace-door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn! – for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh – but smile no more.